Page 55 of The Perfect Guests
“How did this happen?” he says. “We need to get out. What’s Joe doing?”
Sadie turns to watch Joe creeping closer to the flames, as if looking for a way through them. Sparks shoot past his head, and he pats frantically at something on his shoulder and stumbles backward.
Everett’s voice booms over Sadie’s shoulder. “What in the name of all that’s holy...”
Sadie tries desperately to think. “My window’s locked. Can any of you get yours open?” She looks from one guest to another. “Where’s Mrs. Shrew?”
For a moment, they stare at one another blankly, and then they all hurry into different rooms, and Sadie’s left feeling dizzy. What should she do first? Look for Mrs. Shrew? Try other windows? Help Joe?
“Sadie!” It’s Joe, right in front of her. She struggles to lift her gaze from a singed patch of fabric on his shoulder. He takes her by the arm and steers her out of the worst of the smoke, into the nearest bedroom—Nazleen’s. He tries the window, but just like in Sadie’s room, it won’t open. Joe peers through the glass, then swivels to face her.
“Who’s the woman out there?”
She stares at him. “I thought it was my mum, but...”
He nods, seeming less surprised by the suggestion than she is.
“She’ll go for help,” he says, “won’t she? She’s got a car. She’ll drive to the village and raise the alarm...” He sounds as though he’s trying to convince himself more than anything.
Sadie curls her fists, frustrated by the fogginess in her head—she’d blame it on the smoke if it hadn’t started hours earlier, around the dinner table. She feels like she’s been drugged.
“All the windows are locked.” It’s Nazleen, breathless. Sadieturns to look at her, wondering if they’ll all wake up from this nightmare in a minute.
Zach stumbles in, and his words are punctuated by coughing. “I can’t find Mrs. Shrew. Dad won’t stop trying his phone. I keep telling him there’s no signal. Is there another set of stairs up at the far end?”
Sadie remembers the spiral staircase she climbed earlier. She shakes her head.
“It only goes up, to the top of the tower. Not down.”
“Well...” Zach looks taken aback. “How do we get out, then?”
Sadie’s surprised at how calm her voice sounds. “We’ll have to put the fire out, won’t we?” She turns to Joe. “We’ll need water.”
Joe squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Okay, yeah. There’s debris on the stairs—it looks like someone piled up wood or something, to get it started. It’s spreading up the carpet, and the banister’s starting to burn. But”—he gives Sadie a wide-eyed look—“if we can smother it with blankets—wet blankets...”
“Everyone,” Sadie says, “get the bedding off the beds. Curtains, anything you can find. Run the baths to soak them.”
“Will it work?” Zach says.
For a split second, Sadie feels paralyzed by his doubtful expression. Her head buzzes with a host of other questions: Can that really be her mum outside? Who started the fire? Where’s Mrs. Shrew?
“For God’s sake,” Nazleen snaps at Zach. “We’ve got to try something. Go and fill the baths.”
They form a ragged human chain along the corridor, passing sodden sheets and blankets along, and then they surge forward—all but old Everett, who’s still punching numbers uselessly into his phone. They take it in turns to dash closer and hurl the dripping items over the flames. It takes almost every item of bedding fromeight bedrooms, but the fire is gradually dampened until they can tackle the final patches with less panic.
“I think we’ve done it,” Nazleen says.
But Joe urges caution. “As long as the staircase can still take our weight.”
Sadie is the first to make her way down the stairs, her feet squelching on the still-smoking blankets. She runs to the front door and pulls back the lower bolt, but her hands are sore from getting too close to the flames, and the upper bolt is stiff and repeatedly slips in her grasp.
“Who locked us in?” she says, her voice high-pitched, as Everett reaches the ground, puffing loudly.
Halfway down the stairs, Nazleen holds up a big bunch of keys with a confused expression. “Not me. But I do have keys...”
“It’s the bolt that’s stuck.” Sadie tries it again, panic rising in her chest like boiling water in a pan. “It’s too stiff. Can someone help?”
Zach springs down the last few stairs behind Nazleen, and Joe is close behind him, but as they move toward Sadie, a door creaks open farther down the hall, and they all swing around. A figure hovers in the study doorway, her pale blue dressing gown lending her a ghostly appearance in the dim light.
